


Particular Attachments

by Poose



Category: 18th & 19th Century CE RPF, American Revolution RPF, Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Body Image, F/M, Hand Feeding, Historical Inaccuracy, Love Letters, Mania, Married Life, Military Uniforms, References to Depression, Roleplay, Sex Toys, Sharing Clothes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-09
Updated: 2016-02-09
Packaged: 2018-05-19 01:03:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5950324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poose/pseuds/Poose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The cravat she knotted in the fashion of their coach driver, a liberty Alexander would likely let pass without mention; he’d been too tired to notice the last time, as well. Bay rum on her wrists and collarbones, a warmth and spice so different from her own lavender perfume. The tails of the coat hung nearly to her knees, but the excess fabric in front concealed the ill fit of the trousers. Her chin remained beardless, and her cheeks were too full to be a proper man - let alone a war-hungry one - but with her hair pulled back, the effect was nevertheless quite striking. </p><p>Alexander would love it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Particular Attachments

**Author's Note:**

  * For [peakgay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/peakgay/gifts).



> Thanks to [@triedunture](http://archiveofourown.org/users/triedunture/works) for encouragement and exclamation points. Timeline is only sort of accurate, but let's be honest, none of us are actually here for that, right? That rating is because if you control+f for 'cock' you ain't gonna find it.

An unforeseen benefit of marriage to a man who lived work, breathed it, Eliza thought, as her needle darted in and out of the white cloth, was his perpetual absence. By providing her with ample opportunities to miss him she had retained the fondness of their early courtship. Although in those days his letters sustained her, and what a feast those had been.

Few men inclined towards enterprise as its own end, and Alexander was paramount among even that small number. First as he was borne away by the tide of war. Mrs. Washington, truly a paragon, served as Eliza’s model for how to bear it patiently, then, and later, as they settled in the city and he revised for the bar. Having been called to the law he said yes to every case which crossed his desk -- with scant consideration of its merits. Her Alexander took on all that might provide him with coin or notoriety or, in the best case, both.

“I have to work.” Those were his words after he returned from Philadelphia with the blaze of passion upon him. “There is so much I must do. Pray leave me, Betsey,” he had said, “and close the door behind you.” When the others assisted they had at least kept the storm at bay. Burr refused a partnership, dared to coax away cases that should rightfully have belonged to Alexander, and worse still, her husband allowed it! “Let Burr have them,” he said, dabbing his tired red eyes with one of her handkerchiefs, “I require more time.”

She finished the handkerchief with a neat edge of parallel stitches lined up like soldiers, then clipped the tail of thread with her small scissor. A stack of raw-edged cambric squares waited patiently in her sewing basket. After they were hemmed she would embroider each one with her monogram, _EHS,_ white on white, and press them herself until their edges crisped under the iron. Alexander had shop-bought ones in a dozen colours. All impractical fabrics, which meant hers went missing. She would have to collect them from his study, his side of the bed, and on occasion, his office.

~~~

The year turned. Frost set in, the clear glass of their small windowpanes etched with icy engravings. His chair sat empty at breakfast. At dinner. At supper. April came to May and the apple blossoms fell. Warmth outside, and cold, so very cold in her bed.

On this particular night Alexander had wandered in to dinner well after they’d finished the soup, and when their daughter cried out, “Papa!” his chin jerked up as if he hadn’t expected to see her there. He scanned the length of the table then looked down at Philip with an equal amount of trepidation. His countenance was drawn tight with exhaustion. When his eyes landed on her, though, he _knew_ her, through the fog. Woman, wife. He knew her. _Eliza._

“Alexander,” she said, rising from her chair and ushering him to his empty seat at the head of the table. “Won’t you sit with us for a while?” She poured him a glass of beer, dished food onto his plate. Then to the children, “Angelica, use your fork, please? Philip, would you help her?”

After he had stared listlessly at his potatoes for a while, head cradled in his hand, she ventured that he might benefit from a respite from his relentless toil.

“Upstate--” she offered, gentle as could be. To convince her husband was a matter of delicacy. Sweetly she could plant the seed of an idea, but only if Alexander considered himself its originator, only then he would be inclined to pursue it to its dogged end.

Alas, the suggestion to remove to her father’s failed to take root. Another idea had already wrapped its tendrils around Alexander's mind. Steadfast he could be, and stubborn as any draft mule.

“It would serve me better to send the children away,” he said in response. Eliza froze with the salt cellar in her hand as he continued, his voice alight now with rising passion. “Think of it, the house would be far quieter with only the two of us, far more practical for work and study, and would you believe it, Madison has gone so far as to suggest that we work together on a piece about the system of checks and balances--”

“Alexander,” she reprimanded, her tone sharp, with a glance to see if little Angelica had heard.

“Where are you sending us, Papa?” asked Philip with suspicion, quick as one twice his years.

The look she fired across the table could have scorched the butter in its pewter dish. Eliza inclined her head as if to say, _would you care to put out this fire? Father of my children, would you care to soothe this hurt?_

But oh, Alexander’s charm extended even to them. And for a brief moment he returned, clear and whole, to their little family. Alexander pulled Angelica into his lap and let her scratch at his whiskers.

“Don't you want to see Grandfather, Philip?” Alexander asked his son. “Go swimming in the park?”

Philip swung his legs beneath the table, a nervous habit. “Yes, of course. But I want you to come, too,” he sniffed.

Alexander shifted Angelica to his other knee and reached over for Phillip’s hand.

“Your mother and I will miss you very much. And we will write you, and you'll help Grandmother with her letters to us. Would you like that?”

It took some convincing, but Philip eventually agreed that he would very much like to see Grandfather and Grandmother, and that the swimming would be acceptable, as well. Angelica, sweet girl that she was, of course acquiesced.

A letter was dispatched and one received in turn. _Absolutely,_ her mother wrote, they would be delighted to collect the children when they next visited the city.

That night Alexander warmed her bed, though he was gone by daybreak.

~~~

He’d said he must write, and write he did. A drumbeat that kept tempo every waking minute of every passing day. An absent tenant in their home, a mere shade in the passageways. Such a noble request could hardly be denied _\--for our Republic, Betsey!--_ but life continued round the swirling eddy of his enterprise.

Without menus to plan or shopping to do, her children absent, Eliza had time to spare. She called round at friends' houses for idle gossip and strong, hot tea. She visited the milliners and had the brim of her third-best sunbonnet rebraided. She wrote to Angelica, her father and mother and through them, her children. She took down every jar in the pantry and wiped their bases with vinegar water. Her parlor was the cleanest it had been since they took possession of the place. Idleness would end her.

Alexander paced the perimeter of his study; his footsteps quick. Ear pressed to the wood, she could discern one word of every five as he spoke aloud. This was his habit, a rather shocking one, she thought, and best kept behind the confines of these whitewashed walls.

“---pains, no, misrepresentation, or perhaps aversion -- to the monarchy, these men, they, have tried to -- these men have endeavored to -- the detested father? Parent, say parent -- as the governor of New York….”

Perhaps she would ask for a book to read. See if she could calm him, even for a moment, with her presence. “Alexander?” she rapped on the door. Receiving no answer, she pushed the latch and entered the sanctuary within. His voice reared loud in her ears, and she caught the full bore of his declamation.

“...shown in imperial robes, ermine and purple...seated on a throne surrounded with minions and mistresses...envoys of foreign potentates, with the, no, no better to say in, _in_ the supercilious pomp of majesty…”

Every flat surface held a cascade of looseleaf and parchment. Eliza was forced to pick her way gingerly across the floor to avoid stepping on the books strewn there. Tracts piled on treatises, stacked at right angles atop one another. Scarcely a volume remained on the shelves. No matter, Eliza decided, she could find something else to read. Her entrance made as little impression as did her exit, and she tiptoed quietly away.

A tempest was abrew. His mind the gale force wind, sheaves of paper the leaves stripped from the trees. As with all weather, one could only wait for it to change.

~~~

The barometer dropped at last on a Wednesday afternoon. She had been sitting in the parlor, her back to the door as she wrote out the expenses for the month. Even without much work the household economy improved, given the children’s absence and that Alexander had hardly eaten for a slate of Sundays.

His voice in the doorway surprised her, as did his line of questioning. “Why don’t we have anything to eat?”

 _Have you appetite at last?_ she thought to ask. _After all this time?_ Hunger, then: the worst would be over by now. Relief flooded her, a brief moment of elation before the worry set in. How long did they have before the pendulum swung the other way?

“Pie?” he asked, with a hungry plea. “A bun? Cheese, chicken -- anything?”

“There’s bread,” she said, as she totted up the figures a second time and checked for errors. “Tea.” Money was worth so much to Alexander, and yet he deplored to manage it.

Out of the corner of her eye she caught his grimace.

“I’ll have to go to the market,” she said, adding the final flourish to the day’s date, with an invisible sigh into her shoulder.

“Send the cook,” Alexander insisted. “Stay here with me.”

She reached for his hand, her tone gentle as she informed him of her actions. “I dismissed the cook.”

He looked aghast. “When?”

Eliza thought back. “A month or so?”

“How long have I --?”

“-- for some time,” she interrupted. “It is no matter, you’re here now. Shall I bring you something?”

“I should come with you.” Poor darling. She had managed well enough in his absences, but his pride would be stung.

“Stay,” Eliza admonished her husband. “I will return in a quarter of an hour, back before you’ll have a chance to miss me. You could use the time to have a wash.” Her nose wrinkled and she shook her head. “Perhaps you might even see fit to change your shirt.”

“All right,” he said, as she collected her things and tied on her hat. He grasped her hand, blinked at her as if in disbelief of her presence. She stood on tiptoe and laid a kiss on his ashen brow. The front door creaked in its frame as she pulled it closed behind her.

~~~

The trip took longer than expected, as she was required to visit three greengrocers in turn before espying a decent pint of strawberries. These rested in her bag, carefully wrapped in cloth, nestled alongside a quarter of a loaf, some ale-washed cheese, a few early Russet apples, and fresh mustard all the way from France.

“Alexander,” she singsonged at the foot of the stairs. “I’m home.”

Only silence wended its way down. Well, she would fix him a tray, as she had often done in the early months of his homecoming, when appetite kept them from their kitchen. Eliza hummed a waltz to herself as she set out a sharp knife, a cloth, and a china plate on a tray that had been scoured with sand until it gleamed bright as any mirror.

Once upstairs, she found her beloved in repose. Though he had managed to step out of his shoes and pants, he lay atop the bedclothes, twisted up in dreams. When these fits of agitation come over him, he might sleep for a time, but it was restless. Disturbed, very much so. Though his eyes were closed his lips moved with words insensate, punctuated only by names. Hers she could pick out, though in a more agitated tone than ever uttered to her waking. His Excellency’s, the Frenchman’s. And one short syllable that tore at her heart.

“John,” he sighed in his sleep, “John, _John._ ”

She set the tray on her nightstand and looked down at him as he slept. Alexander dreamed his fitful dreams, his vision full of horrors he had seen but scarce mentioned. Fretful herself, Eliza wondered how she she might ease his passage from sleep to waking, how a mere woman might provide balm for his wounds.

In silence, she grabbed the edge of the mattress to steady her passage as she lowered herself to the floor and peered beneath the bed. In a few boxes she kept the things of value they did not store in the safe, which held merely her mother’s garnet earrings, a small hoard of silver, and their marriage license. Treasures from Paris and London, salacious carvings of wood and ivory, thick silken garments too decadent for all but the most rarefied of occasions. Her husband’s letters from their courtship, the war, his travels.

She saved every letter he wrote her, but Eliza was a clever woman, who understood that she was scarce the sole recipient of his most ardent affections. What had happened to those missives, she wondered.  _Burnt as well? So much smoke up the plantation chimney; kindling for a funeral pyre?_ Heaven forfend anyone would have been so careless as to allow them to survive.

Eliza lifted Alexander’s old uniform from its bed of tissue paper and mothballs. She stole a glance in her husband’s direction, at the sunlight dappled across his face, the careworn lines of which were relaxed in repose, but etched there firmly now -- whether by time, cares, or circumstance she dared not say. Acting with the utmost quiet, Eliza escorted herself from the room and went in search of a hot iron and Alexander’s second favorite perfume.

~~~

Alexander had always loved her hair. On calm nights, nights when his storm did not brew or rage, he watched her reflection in the mirror as she brushed it. It fell in a heavy curtain past her shoulders as she unclasped it, teased out the knots with her fingers before giving it a hundred strokes with the brush and then pulling it smooth into a low tail at the nape of her neck.

She glanced back at Alexander, who had rolled onto his side with the coverlet wadded up between his knees, breath whistling through his nose as he snored, lightly. Piece by piece, she dismantled the architecture that held her in place. Off with the handkerchief, tucked into her collar. Already it sent a shiver of scandal over her, to think of Alexander awaking to find the tops of her breasts so immodestly on display. Eyelets in back were loosed and her dress slung over the back of a chair. Even more thrilling was the release of her stays, allowing her to breathe in a full lungful of air without growing lightheaded.

Her underthings she exchanged for the least frilly set in her drawer, woven of the very plainest cambric. They slid cool over her naked body. As she pulled down the camisole, her fingers brushed against the silvery marks which criss-crossed her belly like cracks in a sheet of ice. As Alexander had his scars from battle, so she bore her own. Turning sideways, Eliza pressed a hand against her stomach; when he finished the work, truly finished it, then they would try again. Two was a blessing, and they were strong, healthy. Once they had grown out of their early years she had much less to fear. She indulged the fancy for a moment, all too brief, that her son would wed and bear a son of his own.

Free from wrinkles now, the woolen breeches had to be be rolled at the waist so that they would stay up. The unseemly roll of fabric grew larger as she tucked in the white shirt, whose tails bunched all round her hips. The cravat she knotted in the fashion of their coach driver, a liberty Alexander would likely let pass without mention; he’d been too tired to notice the last time, as well. Bay rum on her wrists and collarbones, a warmth and spice so different from her own lavender perfume. The tails of the coat hung nearly to her knees, but the excess fabric in front concealed the ill fit of the trousers. Her chin remained beardless, and her cheeks were too full to be a proper man - let alone a war-hungry one - but with her hair pulled back, the effect was nevertheless quite striking.

Alexander would love it.

His love for her had never been in doubt, even if it had on occasion been eclipsed by the bright star of John Laurens.

With a final glance in the mirror Eliza nervously smoothed her hair in its queue once more.

“Quite handsome, good Sir,” she said to her reflection, and then immediately felt silly for having said such a thing.

Eliza set the two boxes on the bed near her feet, then wriggled her way next to Alexander, carefully, lest she disturb his rest. Her feet couldn’t reach the blanket, twisted so around his body, but his heat would keep her well warm. In movements slow and deliberate, she opened the first missive and began at the beginning.

~~~

_I pass a great part of my time in company but my dissipations are a very imperfect suspension of my uneasiness. I was cherishing the melancholy pleasure of thinking of the sweets I had left behind and was so long to be deprived of, when a servant from Head Quarters presented me with your letters. I feasted for some time on the sweet effusions of tenderness they contained, and my heart returned every sensation of yours._

_Alas my Betsey you have divested it of every other pretender and placed your image there as the sole proprietor. I struggle with an excess which I cannot but deem a weakness and endeavour to bring myself back to reason and duty. I remonstrate with my heart on the impropriety of suffering itself to be engrossed by an individual of the human race when so many millions ought to participate in its affections and in its cares. But it constantly presents you under such amiable forms as seem too well to justify its meditated desertion of the cause of country humanity, and of glory I would say, if there were not something in the sound insipid and ridiculous when compared with the sacrifices by which it is to be attained._

~~~

“Eliza?” Alexander yawned, some time later. She held the letter she'd been reading - a dull one, all told, foretelling the purchase of their house - against her breast. Gaining leverage like cat, he pushed an arm against her to stretch. His body quivered and she thought to bend to kiss him, when his eyes snapped open in alarm. At once he struggled to throw off the blankets which kept him in a tangle, wound like a knot, close to her side. He pled with her to set him free with the refrain she knew as well as her own heartbeat. “I have to work. I should not have slept. I need to work." 

“You will,” she said. “All in good time, my love.” Eliza kissed the bridge of his nose, so pale for lack of sunshine. “Rest a while.”

As a reflex to her kisses, his hand gripped her upper arm. Just as his eyes had begun to close again they snapped open, shocked and wide, as he touched the wool of her coat. A decidedly unfeminine garment, yes, and fraught with memory --

“Eliza,” he said, an excited quaver in his voice, “my dearest Betsey, love, you don’t have to--”

“Alexander,” she soothed, "It's all right." Steeling herself against the sensation of queasiness to speak so boldly, she pitched her voice lower, though it was but a mockery of a man’s. “Hamilton, you need to be quiet, lest we be discovered in such a compromising position.” Alexander’s pitiable gasp flooded her heart. He grabbed her arm more tightly.

“Will you eat?” she asked, “I have but a little. It is poor soldiers’ fare, but I will share it, if it pleases you.”

Sleep had made his limbs heavy but eventually she tugged him into place, his back to her chest; if it felt other than it might have with him (her skin too smooth, her smell too flowery), he allowed it to pass without mention.

His excitement was evident - a married couple had no secrets in such things - but he required sustenance before she would consider the proposition implicit in their lying there, clothed thusly.

With her husband between her legs, Eliza cut thin slices from the apple and fed them to him, piece by piece. They drank from the same bottle. As she plied him with wine and fruit his mouth grew darker and his breath came more shallow against her neck.

Only when they had emptied the bottle down to the dregs did she set it aside and reach beneath his shirt. Never one for idleness, Eliza wasted no time in slipping a hand up to press him as he lay, hard against his soft belly. The contrast pleased her greatly - as did Alexander’s lovely sound of need. A choked-off fragment of her name, his name? 

"Eliza, Betsey -- I --”

He struggled with what to call her on such occasions, for even in her poor masquerade as a soldier, he knew her. He would know her in silence, in shadow. Her thighs had gripped him a thousand times in tight embrace, their mouths met tenfold times more. 

She lifted a finger to his lips. “Hush, my darling.”

He twisted round to kiss her, then, and she reciprocated. Warmth suffused her cheeks as she touched him, cuffing the back of his neck possessively, and lowering him beneath her onto her side of the bed. 

"We must keep very quiet," she said, and then, through tight teeth she added, "Colonel." 

Alexander's hand met hers. He pressed his lips together, heeding her warning. She sought to aid him in this endeavour, and stopped his mouth with a kiss. Blindly, she rummaged behind her for the contents of the other box. Letters cascaded to the floor, their order all mixed up, they would have to be set aright.

 _Tomorrow_ , she decided, _leave it for tomorrow_ as she laid Alexander out and found her bearings between his legs. He bit down hard on his lower lip, leaving white imprints in the rosy flesh, and for a brief, frightening moment, Eliza wished to be a man. To overpower him, truly, beyond this silly playacting, pin hands behind his head and breach him with her own flesh rather than a pale reproduction. What might that be like? 

But Alexander heaved beneath her, his eyes raw from exhaustion and his mouth sealed tight. _Quiet, could you imagine such a thing?_ She could not be but herself, but it would do well enough. 

She sat up on her heels and tipped out the contents of the box. The tangled sheets she threw to the floor, as they would only impede her progress. Alexander sat up on his elbows to watch her pick through the options. 

Marriage taught a wife many things: household economy, how to share a bed, how to miss a man. It was a good teacher of other, more subtle lessons: whether a game should be won or lost depending on his temper, how thickly she should ask the baker to slice their loaf, and what he might have need of, when he needed her in this way.

From the strain in his neck she noted his tension. It would not serve to force upon him anything greater than that for which he might have capacity in such a state. Yet his excitement was evident as well, its rigidity lifting his shirttails away from his body. 

Her fingers grazed over glass, metal, bone. In the end she opted for the polished warmth of what had once been a branch of a yew tree. 

"Will it serve?" she asked, a little breathless at the thought of it. Alexander's eyes widened and he nodded. She had to kiss him again, then, to clutch at his shoulders and catch his scent. 

"You promised to be quiet, Colonel Hamilton," she said, as her hands - delicate, a woman's - prepared him for the taking. "If you needs avail yourself of my handkerchief, you have only to nod."

Good that she had indicated the call for quiet, for he had begun to open his mouth to speak when she breached him and a noise flooded the room that seemed to emanate from deep within his belly. 

"You're all right," she said, then remembered that in her place, Laurens would have taken instead of soothed. "Hush, Hamilton," she admonished, "pray, hush." Her arm grew tired - she was right about his tension, wound tight as a bowstring, she afeared he would snap - and when he could look her in the eye no longer, Eliza permitted him to bury his head in her breast as she took him in hand. 

She plucked the pleasure from him; he heeded her call for silence. Save for the labour of his breathing, the widening of his eyes, no sound transgressed his lips. 

The wooden phallus clattered to the floor, as Alexander collapsed against the pillow, spent. His eyes had already closed, but she laid a hand atop his heart and kissed his cheek. Eliza curved her body beside his as he drifted back into rest. Her head met his on the pillow. Side by side, two soldiers enlisted together in this marriage. In this life at least. She would worry much, much later about the next one.  

**Author's Note:**

> I am a sucker for comments, if you're so inclined. I'm making more questionable decisions at [@pitcherplant.](tumblr.pitcherplant.com)
> 
> Rebloggable link is [here.](http://pitcherplant.tumblr.com/post/138975205024)


End file.
